Danya Pilchen is a composer based in The Hague. His main interest lies in the human experience of time and music’s ability to shed light on it. He has composed for a wide range of settings, including solo, ensemble, and orchestra, as well as theatre productions. A significant part of his practice involves creating immersive sound installations that incorporate instrumental performances.
Danya’s music is closely intertwined with his research into collective experiences of time in musical practices. Understanding time as an emerging property of consciousness affected by social interactions necessitates increased attention to the relationships between musicians and audiences in Danya’s pieces. To facilitate these interactions, he employs various compositional strategies and listening techniques engaging the materiality of sound.
PRE-ORDER MY NEW CD!
My new album Paper Braids is coming out on Moving Furniture Records on March 27.
Paper Braids is a piece for four organs with live electronics, in which the ensemble and I invite listeners to explore the acoustics of the Orgelpark hall in Amsterdam by activating resonances at its different points with finely tuned organ sounds and acoustic feedback.
Written for my long-term collaborators, the Kali Ensemble, this piece is a culmination of our collective practice that centres listening as the basis of musical interaction, awareness of how sound interacts with the performance space, and using that spatial awareness as a basis for both the duration of individual sounds and the temporal unfolding of an entire piece.
Performed by Kali Ensemble:
Nirantar Yakthumba: organ, coding
Joel Gester Suárez: organ
Gregor Connelly: live electronics
Live sound engineering by Clare Gallagher. Recorded and mastered by Bert van Dijk.
Design by Rutger Zuidervelt.
Photos by Yinquan Chen.
Danya Pilchen 